


look how long this love can hold its breath

by smallredboy



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Insomnia, M/M, Married Couple, POV Molly Graham, Skeletons In The Closet, Sleeptalking, Will Graham Loves Hannibal Lecter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23059969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallredboy/pseuds/smallredboy
Summary: Molly listens in on Will's sleeptalking regularly.
Relationships: Molly Graham/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 15
Kudos: 200
Collections: Prompt Table Challenge: Clouds and Shadows





	look how long this love can hold its breath

**Author's Note:**

> **clouds and shadows @ creativechallenges:** skeletons in the closet
> 
> i've got like, feelings about molly.
> 
> enjoy!

Molly worries.

It's a natural fact of life to worry, but when you're married to Will Graham, you worry even more.

She's learned to live with his nervous ticks. The way he fiddles with things when he's nervous, the way he doesn't look at her in the eye as much as she begs him to, the way he avoids any discussion in regard to his life before her like the plague.

She understands why. She understands that Will's life wasn't picturesque before he met her. But he never tells her anything— he sighs and tells her to Google it or to ask Jack Crawford. He wishes to remove himself from all of it, and she doesn't blame him. He doesn't seek a psychiatrist, doesn't take anything to deal with the trauma, and she doesn't blame him. Hannibal Lecter was a psychiatrist; of course he doesn't want to sit in one of their expensive seats once again.

What she reads about Hannibal Lecter is horrifying, but the tales about Will's experience with him are concise. Will has never been a man of the press, and it's mostly speculation. He framed him for the murders of the copycat killer, he stabbed him, and he surrendered to the FBI in front of Will's cabin.

That's all she has.

He's never talked about it. About how far it went, about Hannibal's manipulations, about Hannibal's friendship with him, about going to search for him in Italy, about getting kidnapped with him.

There's nothing she can get from it all, except for when he dreams. He's always talked in his sleep, sometimes sleepwalked a little, and it gives her enough clues to have an idea or two about what's going on with her husband.

* * *

"No, not your life, no."

Molly wakes up to the sound of her husband talking in his sleep. She remains stock-still, not wanting to bother him.

"I already have." He pauses for a moment, soft panting leaving his mouth. "No, no, no," he breathes like a mantra, clinging onto the sheets for dear life. "You can have me, you can have me, take me to Italy at gun- gunpoint, just don't— don't kill her, no, please, no…"

She's read about Abigail Hobbs. She's read about how she was found dead in the scene Hannibal fled from. But Will has never talked about his bond toward her, how he cared about her.

Will has never talked about a lot of things, and when he wakes up, the back of his shirt soaked with sweat, he doesn't say anything. He doesn't ask if Molly heard, he doesn't say anything as he stands and goes to the laundry room.

*******

Molly has insomnia, but she is not too bothered by it. By 2:30 AM, almost every night, her husband starts talking in his sleep. She's fascinated by it. The same routine holds onto her— stay awake until she hears him and then take her sleeping pills. She gets little pieces, little clues like that.

"He left us his broken heart, Abigail," Will says, face buried on his pillow.

There's articles about a man's body contorted in a church in Palermo, Italy, all dated eight months after Hannibal's escape. If she squints at the police pictures (ever so kindly leaked into the web), he looks like a heart.

*******

"Because… I wanted to run away with him."

Molly's blood freezes in her veins, and she looks down at her teacup, taking a long sip.

Is he talking about Hannibal? That's the only thing that makes sense, but Will has told her how often his dreams are nonsensical and weird. It'd only make sense for him to replay parts of his life before her in his mind's eye.

"I called him. I told him that you knew… yes, like I believe he did with Garrett Jacob Hobbs… I wanted him to leave before you got there for dinner…"

It's about Hannibal.

She can't deny that anymore.

* * *

"We're conjoined," Will mumbles. "Curious to see if… either of us can survive separation."

Molly draws in a breath and looks at her mug, the tea going cold. This routine isn't really all that good. It doesn't give her any answers, just vague ideas and conjectures she doesn't dare ask her husband about.

"I love you, Hannibal."

She's taken aback so hard that she knocks over her mug, cursing— it was going cold, but it was still warm, it leaving a damp spot on the sheets. Will, a light sleeper as ever, rouses, eyes wide as he looks at her.

"Are you okay?" he asks, voice charged with sleep and frantic energy.

"Yeah," she breathes. "I must've fallen asleep with the tea."

It's an obvious lie, and Will stares at her for several seconds, almost weighing the options of calling her out on it or leaving it alone.

He goes for calling her out on it.

"Did you hear me talk in my sleep?"

She looks away.

"Yeah," she nods, voice heavy.

He swallows and stares at the damp spot on the sheets. "What did I— what did I say?"

"Do you love Hannibal?" she asks instead.

She doesn't look, but she can see him pale, can see him twitch.

"I love you," he replies.

"That doesn't answer my question," she says, voice heavy with a pitch-black sadness.

"I'm sorry."

"I don't want an apology, Will."

He turns to lay his head on his pillow, closes his eyes. For a moment she thinks he's going to sleep, that he's going to ignore the question hanging by a thread, either of them ready to drop the knife that will cut it off.

"Yes," he answers, voice thick with tears. She considers going over and shushing him, wiping them away, but she knows he won't accept that. "I never talked about it with you because, well, what would you say? _My husband is bisexual and in love with a cannibalistic serial killer. How do I get the divorce papers?_ It wouldn't— be good. But yes. Yes." He draws in a breath, a long one that seems to shake his body to its core. "I do. I always will, I think. No matter how far I try to get away from him he will always… he will always be there, in my heart, in my soul. He's marked me far deeper than anyone ever has. He branded me far worse than they branded him in Muskrat Farm."

Will is rambling now, nonsense that she doesn't get, but she listens to him. She keeps her hands to herself.

"Did you marry me just to get away from him?" she asks, voice tight.

It'd make sense. She's normal. She's… _average_. She is nothing like Hannibal Lecter. (And she's a _woman_ , a woman with a child. If he's trying to get away from his attraction to a man, she's the most logical choice. She's not stupid, she can see that.)

"No," he says, straightening up, as if the question had shook him awake more than anything else had. He looks up at her, eyes wide, and there's tear tracks on his cheeks. She wants nothing more than to lean toward him and clean him, clean his dirtied soul, because she knows there is far too much to cleanse in there.

He's broken in ways she had never realized.

"I love you for you," he says, shaking ever so slightly. "I really did not want you to know, Molly."

"I've been listening," she admits. "I've been listening to you when you talk in your sleep. It gave me little clues, but I didn't…"

"Well, I never came out to you," he says, trying to sound light, but his voice is heavy like the bricks on his back.

"I love you for you," she echoes.

"Even though I'm broken?" he asks, smiling at her; she can see an imagined carnage between his teeth, the blood of a man or two, those he must've found on his hands when he was with Hannibal Lecter. The thought makes a shiver curl up her spine.

She's safe, she tells herself. Will would never harm her or her son.

(At least, she hopes so.)

"Yes," she nods. "Can I kiss you?"

Will stares at her, as if he's waiting to wake up from a dream. But she doesn't dissolve into smoke.

"Yes."

She leans in and kisses him, tears right on her lips, salty and sick; she can taste metal, blood coating her teeth. She can taste the carnage of her husband's life before her and after her; she knows he will crawl back to him one day. One way or another.

But for now, she revels on what she can have. She takes what she can get.

"I love you," she tells him again.

His lip twitches, eyes with an unspeakable sadness in them, two half-moons looming over the ocean.

"I love you too. I'm sorry."

"Nothing to apologize for," she lies, leaning forward and wrapping her arms around him, keeping him all for herself.

Keeping him all for herself, before he goes back home to the man who's eaten his past self whole.

She's not stupid. She knows it's only a matter of time.


End file.
